“TAKE A LITTLE HONEY WITH YOU”
(GENESIS 43:11)
These are words that Jacob used when he called his sons and prepared them for a trip to Egypt to buy corn. After all, Canaan was a “land of milk and honey.”
So honey was used as a medium of exchange. Honey has been called the perfect food. It has been likened to milk in this respect. Take the two together and you have quite a potent combination. It has been said that honey was the only thing known that actually goes into the heart itself and heals the arteries and muscles. All told, there’s no long-term human study available on honey and heart health. More research is needed to better understand honey’s effects on heart health. Otherwise there are many helpful and much needed nutrients of which the human body benefits from.
With this in mind, I would like to introduce to you a “honey” that is of even more importance. It is the honey of KINDNESS. Just as honey out of a jar is sweet, healing, soothing, strengthening, and gentle, so is KINDNESS to those whom we contact and even to ourselves. This is the kind of honey that is needed in every relationship of life. The clouds have never been darker than they are now. Every crime imaginable is on the increase. Juvenile delinquency as well as adult delinquency continues to threaten our very civilization. Civil disobedience is completely out of control. There has never been as much hatred, avarice, strife, ungodliness, immorality, and a whole catalogue of other sins such as we are experiencing now. People have very little regard for each other. Lying and deceiving are the order of the day. Graft in high circles and low circles is accepted almost without an apology. Families are broken, children are disturbed, the psychiatrists are having to work overtime - the picture is not good. This is why we need this healing balm – KINDNESS! Is balm to the soul, the body, to the very life. This world needs it about as much as anything we can think of at this time. You may be asking in your mind, “If kindness is so important just where shall we take it?” Although there are several places we could and should take it, let us consider this one.
We need to take honey with us into all the religious relationships of life. In trying to win our friends who are not Christians; into our homes and most of all, when we come together to worship God and bringing KINDNESS to our brothers and sisters in Christ! It just might provide for us all the healing balm so much needed in our lives!
Onward Rejoicing, John B. Daniels, Associate Minister
